by James, David
“A fork into the back of your hand?”
“No, I was afraid I’d break a nail . . . and you know how hard it is for me to get them to grow to any length at all. Rock climbing really does a number on them.”
“Chewing on them doesn’t help, either. Amanda, I’m so sorry about what happened. And by the way, why didn’t you call me about this?”
“Alex, I called your office today, but they said you were up in Joshua Tree on a sale. A big one?”
Alex knitted his eyebrows. “Was what a big one?”
“Your sale!”
“Oh, that. Yes, one-point-nine million.”
“I didn’t know there was that kind of money up in the higher desert.”
“Oh yeah. There are a lot of artists, recording industry people, New Age, metaphysical types, and a few reclusive movie stars buying up property there.”
“Leave it to you to sniff out where the money is going next, Alex. You’ve always had that ability to guess the future.”
“Okay, okay . . . enough about me. So tell me what happened today.”
I related the entire sequence of events while Alex listened intently, silently nodding his head from time to time, as if he were compiling all the facts, sorting them, and preparing to spit them out in a startling conclusion. When I finished my story, I waited for him to respond. I could see that his little gray cells were furiously processing the information, trying to see the answer in the fog of details.
No answer came. He turned his head ever so slightly, as if to physically change the subject.
“So how are you, though, Amanda? You must be pretty shook up.”
“Naw, not me. At least not in the scared sense. There’s just this overarching feeling of shame.”
“Well, you were raised Catholic. What do you want?”
“Not that, Alex. I just feel that I have to clear my name.”
“Of what?”
“Of the fact that of all the houses for sale in Palm Springs, someone chose mine to murder someone in.”
“But you didn’t murder him.”
“I know that, but you know the old Lithuanian saying: The strong perfume hides the foul stench.”
“What does that have to do with the murder of Doc?”
“Oh, right . . . wrong saying. What I meant to say was, Stand in a manure-filled field and you, too, will soon attract flies.”
“Did your grandmother tell you that . . . Martha the Merciless?”
“Yes, but she once claimed that she saw the Virgin Mary in a jar of pickled pig’s feet, so her credibility is a little shaky. Plus, she used to collect strange-looking mushrooms from deep forests and cook them.”
“So your point is . . . ?”
“My point is that other agents are going to think that I wasn’t chosen just by accident . . . that I had something, however small, to do with Doc’s death . . . no matter how absurd that would be.”
“So what do you propose to do about it?”
“Clear my name.”
“By doing what?”
“By finding out who murdered Doc Winters.”
“And how will you do that?” Alex asked, staring right into my eyes like my mother seeking an answer to the question of who ate the last piece of lemon pie.
“I’ll do a little investigating on my own. I realized today how easy it is to get information out of people, especially in the real-estate business. People are just aching to talk. My hairdresser, Roberto, gave me an earful of good information just this afternoon.”
“Amanda, he’s a hairdresser. People treat them like psychiatrists. And for the most part, they are the same . . . only cheaper . . . and you come out looking better than you went in. Anyway, you will do no such thing, Amanda. You don’t know who did this. To murder a prominent environmentalist in broad daylight is pretty ballsy. You don’t know what someone might do to a person like you who goes sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong.”
“Oh, Alex,” I remarked, taking his hand. “I’m a big girl . . . I can take care of myself!” I added, patting his hand to reassure him. “Let’s go outside.”
As I turned to leave with Alex, everything on the drinks table started following me, as if I were holding a large magnet that attracted only liquor and the glasses it was put into. For a second, I thought we were having an earthquake, but there was no noise, no rumbling. Dozens of bottles and pyramids of highball glasses and champagne flutes came crashing at our feet while every eye within a forty-mile radius turned to see what all the commotion was about.
When the crashing, which seemed to go on forever, finally subsided, I looked down to see the tablecloth had latched itself under one of the buckles on my bondage skirt. Jerry Lewis couldn’t have pulled a better stunt.
There was an eerie silence, which, in my deserved guilt, I felt inclined to break.
“Boy, one martini and you can’t take me anywhere!”
Alex and I promptly put some distance between us and the drinks table that was now mostly on the floor, and stepped outside to enjoy the beautiful night sky of the desert. My move wasn’t just to minimize embarrassment, it was for protection. Realtors, being huge alcoholics, would be furious that I had destroyed almost all of the booze at the party. They might be forced to drink, God forbid, water.
“Amanda,” Alex started in a tone that suggested he was about to propose. “Amanda, how about I come back to Apex and we hook up as business partners again?”
I just about leaped out of my panty hose.
“Well, I don’t know about . . .” I started, not wanting to sound too eager, even though it was the best news I’d heard since Regina said she’s been having hot sex through her seventies. “Okay.”
“I don’t want to push . . .”
“Alex, are your ears full of sand? I said okay.”
“Really?” Alex seemed truly surprised.
“Yes, really! Alex, did you really think I was going to turn you down? We may be divorced, but we’re soul mates. In fact, we’re so attuned to each other, you knew what my answer was going to be before you even asked your question. Am I right?”
“Well, yes, but I just didn’t want to appear too eager—just like you were thinking a moment ago.”
It was uncanny. In our brief marriage, Alex and I soon discovered that we usually knew what the other was thinking at any given moment and could often complete each other’s sentences. As I was thinking this, I looked at Alex and could sense that he was, ironically, thinking the exact same thought.
I reached out and held Alex’s hands in mine and looked deeply into his beautiful blue eyes. “Alex, why couldn’t I have been born with a cock?”
“Had you been, luck would have it that I would’ve been born with a vagina.”
We both broke down into stifled laughs.
“Oh, hell,” I relented. “If you’re handed lemons . . .”
“Squeeze it and make it into a cocktail.”
“Better than lemonade. So, Alex, how’s the new gay life going? Have you found anyone special?” It sounded so weird asking this, but it had to be thrown out into the limelight at some point. It was time to start acting like a divorced woman who’s still friends with her ex-husband.
“No, no one at all.”
“Alex, I’m shocked. I would have thought you’d have guys waiting to swoop down on you the moment you were free.”
“They have been,” he replied.
“Oh,” I said, dripping with despair.
“But I don’t want most of them,” he said with a wry smile. “It’s just that the men here are so . . . so . . . faggoty.”
“Faggoty? Could you define that term?”
“Uhm, how do I say it? Ah, I’ve got it: The glitz is the substance.”
“That’s from Shakespeare, isn’t it? Twelfth Night?”
“No, the Merchant of Penis.”
“Hey, Alex, that would be a great name for a gay porn film. We could produce a whole new series of sophisticated porn based on the works of Sh
akespeare! We follow Merchant of Penis with Tite-Ass Andronicus !”
“Followed by Winter’s Tail, A Midsummer’s Night Wet Dream, and Rimming of the Shrew.”
“That’s good, Alex. We wouldn’t even have the change the names for As You Like It, Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Measure for Measure!” I added, extending my hand from my crotch out to twelve inches each time I pronounced the word measure.
“We’ll make a million. Now, where were we?”
“Trouble finding suitable soul mates.”
“Amanda, I’m not even shooting that high. I’d settle for a fuckbuddy who can say something intelligent.”
“You encourage them to talk?! There’s your first mistake.”
“I know, I know. Either they open their mouth and I have to hear all about the new couch they just bought or . . . or a purse falls out.”
“That can really ruin it. You cruise someone and instead of Darth Vader, the sound that comes out when you walk up to them to make contact is more Paris Hilton. Or that’s the least of your problems.”
“Yes, like he leads you into his bedroom, and there in the corner on a mannequin is a wedding dress that once belonged to his mother.”
“Euuuu, yuk!” I replied. “Could he fit into it?”
“All it needed was a little taking in here and there,” Alex said.
“Have people always been this insane, or are they just getting worse?”
“I think the human race has always been that way. People like you and I are just getting more adept at spotting it. But at the same time, yes, I think that everyone’s coming unglued.”
“Would you like to go get another martini?” I asked.
“Sure . . . maybe we can suck some vodka and olives off the floor.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time. Remember that party in Berlin?”
“Oh, Amanda, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
CHAPTER 7
Curses, Foiled Again
The next morning, my phone rang at 8 A.M. It was a little early, but I expected that the police wanted me to come down to identify a suspect. Or tell me that the case was solved. Imagine my surprise when it was neither.
“Hello Amanda Thorne.”
“This is Coyote Woman.”
I assumed that I was talking to a human instead of a canine, so I proceeded carefully. “Yes, what can I do for you?”
“There was a murder in the house you have listed in Palm Springs yesterday.”
“Yes, yes, there was.”
“I know all about it.”
“Have you talked to the police? They could use your information.”
“Miss Thorne, I’m a psychic.”
You predicted it?”
“No, no, I read about it in the newspaper. But I do have psychic powers. And this is why I am calling you.”
“Okay,” I said.
“You need to have your house cleansed.”
“I’m having the carpets steamed on Wednesday.”
“No, not cleaning. Cleansing.”
“Okay. And I suppose you are the person to do it?”
“Absolutely, you can’t leave something this important in the hands of an amateur.”
“You’re absolutely right, Mrs. Coyote, it would be tragic to leave this cleansing to someone who didn’t use the proper eye of newt.”
“Mrs. Thorne, this is a serious matter. If that house is not cleansed, the bad energy will prevent you from ever selling it. People will feel it the moment they step foot in the house. Doc Winters was a firm believer in higher consciousness. He was a frequent visitor to the Institute of Mentalphysics and the Integratron here in the high desert, and I’m sure that his spirit would want the bad energy removed from your listing.”
I was about to dismiss Coyote Woman as a huckster who scoured the obituaries in search of profitable house-cleansing gigs, when the possible connection to Doc Winters was mentioned.
“Mrs. Coyote . . .”
“Barbara,” came the correction.
“Barbara,” I said into the receiver that I momentarily held away from my face as if it were an object of puzzling origin. “I agree that the house is in desperate need of a cleaning.”
“Cleansing, Mrs. Thorne. This isn’t Molly Maid service.”
“Yes, of course, Barbara. When can I have this done? I’m eager to put this all behind me. For me and my client.”
“Of course. I can drive down next Thursday. Midday is better since the energy will be at its peak then.”
“Two o’clock?”
“Fine. I will see you then.”
“Oh, before you go Coyote Woman, could I ask how much you charge for a cleansing? I’m new at this sort of thing,” I said timidly. After all, I wanted to get some answers about Doc Winters, but I wasn’t prepared to get hosed in order to get them. It’s not that money was a big concern—it was the principle of the thing.
“Two hundred dollars,” came the answer.
Nice gig, I thought.
“Okay, Barbara, we will see you at two P.M. next Thursday.”
“We?”
“My business partner and I. Actually, my ex-husband.”
“You still talk to each other?” Barbara asked.
“Well, yes. Why not?”
“I don’t talk to mine. Of course, he wouldn’t talk to me after I filled his behind with rock salt.”
“You caught him in bed with another woman?”
“Bingo.”
“You must be a good shot, to hit a running target.”
“Oh, he wasn’t running. I made him get out of bed and bend over and grasp his ankles. Then I pulled the trigger.”
“You didn’t hurt him too badly?”
“Just his pride. Okay, so he couldn’t sit down for a month,” Coyote Woman answered with pride I could hear over the telephone. “Okay, enough of that. Now, one last thing, Mrs. Thorne . . . I don’t allow others in the house while I cleanse. And I can’t perform this cleansing if you two don’t believe in what I am attempting to do.”
Since I planned to pump this broad for information, I decided to sound as humble as possible.
“Absolutely.”
“And I don’t take checks. Only cash.”
“Certainly. I will see you next week.”
I hung up, realizing that I would have to work on Alex beforehand, explaining that he would have to hide his disbelief in order to pump the gal for information. Alex, due to his extremely progressive upbringing, was allowed to choose his own faith—if any—based on what he concluded. (I loved his parents.) And he concluded that he was an objective existentialist. In other words, Alex felt that the universe exists, and that it and nature and events just happen, not according to any god-influenced design. As humans, he reasoned, we must strive to find meaning in our work and our relationships not with just humans, but with the earth and the universe itself. Alex had invented a religion based on his observation of the world and the universe around him—not on what others had told him to do.
My mother, while delighted that I was marrying “into money,” as she termed it, was beside herself when she found out that not only was Alex not Catholic, but a proud atheist.
“When you mentioned you were going to marry in a civil ceremony, I thought it was because he was Lutheran or something. But an atheist! How can a person believe in nothing?! That old joke, about the atheist who died: He was all dressed up and had nowhere to go—that’s what he wants to do when he dies? Just lie there?”
“He’ll be unconscious, so what does it matter?”
“And what’s going to happen to you? I suppose the next thing is that you’ll be dressing in yellow robes and dancing around at airports, huh?”
“Mom, I’m not going to become a Hare Krishna. I will make up my own mind about what religion—if any—that I choose to join!”
“That’s why I did my level best to raise you Catholic—where you don’t get a choice, where for two thousand years people didn’t question
things. You just kept your mouth shut and did what the church told you to—even if it made no sense at all!”
That, in a nutshell, is my mother’s take on the world. You keep your nose to the grindstone, don’t ask any questions or have conflicting thoughts, you die, and go to heaven, where, presumably, it’s just the same rigmarole all over again. For eternity. Hey, sign me up!
No sooner than I hung up on Coyote Woman, the phone rang again.
“Is this the real-estate agent Amanda Thorne?”
“Yes, it is. Who’s calling?”
“Eagle Feather.”
I half-expected a knock-knock joke, but when none manifested itself, I felt it was time to take another tack.
“Yes, Eagle Feather, what can I do for you?”
“I heard about the murder in the house you have listed for sale.”
“And you think it needs to be cleansed and that you’re the one to do it.”
“That’s uncanny!” exclaimed the voice on the other end of the line. “How did you know that?”
“I’m psychic,” I confided snidely.
“Really? How long have you had the gift?”
“About fifteen minutes, give or take. Now, what can I help you with?”
“The house cleansing.”
“Oh, yes, the cleansing. Well, to tell the truth, I just agreed to have a person by the name of Coyote Woman cleanse my house this Thursday.”
I could hear a sharp intake of breath through the receiver. From the sound of it, I could tell that this was not welcome news to Eagle Feather.
“Coyote Woman?! Coyote Woman?! Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Why, what’s wrong with Coyote Woman?”
“When we have our full-moon drummings to summon the spirits, her rhythm is all off.”
“Well, we can’t all be Buddy Rich.”
“Who?” Eagle Feather asked.
“He was a great jazz drummer. He played with everyone from Tommy Dorsey to Louis Armstrong.”
“Who?”
“Never mind,” I said. “So Coyote Woman has no rhythm. Is that a good reason not to hire her?”
“She also has a bad aura.”
“Really?” I challenged.
“Too much blue,” Eagle Feather admitted.
“And her aura doesn’t match her handbag.”
